New to this period property experience

[Joanne W]

Hi all

There's so much conflicting information out there I'm looking for some clarity please. We've recently moved into a 1890 brick and lime mortar farm house. We need to make some improvements and I want to treat the house in the way that is best for it.

1 the previous owner painted the inside walls with bog standard B&Q paint, I'm looking to decorate with clay paint but how do I do about removing the old paint without damaging the walls and leaving them breathable?

2 the bathroom has wooden panelling on the walls which I would prefer to replace with ceramic tiles. I'm assuming tiling straight onto the walls would compromise the breathability of the walls, is this right and if so how do you get round it - plaster board the room on battens and tile on that ???

3 some of the bricks on the outside are damaged which has lead to a couple of areas becoming a bit damp. A builder has suggested rendering l, which unless he's using a lime product (which he hasn't said he will use) makes no sense to me, he says it will be sealed so it will be fine but I'm thinking if it's sealed it isn't breathing.

Any advice please?

Many thanks for reading this far.

Joanne

 

[mardinor]

Welcome Joanne, and congrats on becoming well informed. You appear to now know much more than your builder about old buildings!

Having owned a similar property for 25 years, and been learning from this wonderful forum for the majority of that time, here's my tuppence worth. In general, the principles of breathability are important to understand what's happening with your house. This helps fix extant problems such as damp patches and to avoid big and expensive mistakes such as cement rendering. How far to go in remedying poor practices is slightly different, and here pragmatism can save you a lot of time, money and worry. To answer your points:

1) Breathable paint is undoubtedly beneficial and should be used whenever there is new lime plaster or a problem caused by plastic paint. However, where plastic paint is already there and intact my first question would be: is it causing a problem? And if so, where is the source of water? If there is no problem apparent, I'd leave it alone and feel free to redecorate with plastic paint if you prefer as it's unlikely to make it worse. If there IS a need to remove the paint (your point 3 could be such an instance) then it's easy to carefully sand off back to plaster. Easily DIYable, but essential to invest in dustless sanding - mesh sanding discs (see 3M Cubitron or Mirka Abranet) at P80 then P120 plus a vacuum and light random orbit sander. If you have more than a room to do I would strongly suggest investing in good kit. Go for a Mirka Deros sander plus Festool CTL MIDI. These will cost a grand, versus £300 for a Makita sander and Henry hoover, but make life so much easier and can always be sold on ebay for virtually the price you paid. The difference between dust-free sanding and the usual method is huge. You will be wiping dust from every orifice of your house and body for months otherwise!

2) Again, I wouldn't overthink this one. Grouting is porous and many traditional floors deal with damp ground successfully without a DPC and with glazed tiles purely through the porosity of the grouting. Whatever you do, avoid plasterboard in the bathroom. Once wet it has the structural integrity of tissue paper. Lime plaster can deal with floods and be fine once dry. So, strip off the panelling and tile.

3) Don't let that builder anywhere near your house. Be prepared to accept that 99.9% of all tradesmen do not understand older buildings and will make them much worse. Your house has worked fine for a century. If it didn't need rendering during that period it's unlikely to need it now. This is one of those cases where your knowledge has just saved your wallet, sanity and house! 'Sealing' never, ever works. And when it fails, it's like wearing waders with a leak. Replace the bricks (they can sometimes be chiseled out and turned around if you can't find a match), potentially repaint internally (see point 1) with clay paint, then wait and see. If I were you I would have a really good look for other sources of water ingress too - dripping gutter, overflow pipe, rain splashback if near the ground, etc. Damaged bricks could be the problem, but they are pretty common and most times aren't an issue in isolation - there's usually a combo with a repeated water source, rather than just weather.


Final piece of unsolicited advice: the best course of action is often to wait and see. And strategic procrastination is enabled by Kit Kats and Yorkshire Tea.

 

[Joanne W]

Welcome Joanne, and congrats on becoming well informed. You appear to now know much more than your builder about old buildings!

Having owned a similar property for 25 years, and been learning from this wonderful forum for the majority of that time, here's my tuppence worth. In general, the principles of breathability are important to understand what's happening with your house. This helps fix extant problems such as damp patches and to avoid big and expensive mistakes such as cement rendering. How far to go in remedying poor practices is slightly different, and here pragmatism can save you a lot of time, money and worry. To answer your points:

1) Breathable paint is undoubtedly beneficial and should be used whenever there is new lime plaster or a problem caused by plastic paint. However, where plastic paint is already there and intact my first question would be: is it causing a problem? And if so, where is the source of water? If there is no problem apparent, I'd leave it alone and feel free to redecorate with plastic paint if you prefer as it's unlikely to make it worse. If there IS a need to remove the paint (your point 3 could be such an instance) then it's easy to carefully sand off back to plaster. Easily DIYable, but essential to invest in dustless sanding - mesh sanding discs (see 3M Cubitron or Mirka Abranet) at P80 then P120 plus a vacuum and light random orbit sander. If you have more than a room to do I would strongly suggest investing in good kit. Go for a Mirka Deros sander plus Festool CTL MIDI. These will cost a grand, versus £300 for a Makita sander and Henry hoover, but make life so much easier and can always be sold on ebay for virtually the price you paid. The difference between dust-free sanding and the usual method is huge. You will be wiping dust from every orifice of your house and body for months otherwise!

2) Again, I wouldn't overthink this one. Grouting is porous and many traditional floors deal with damp ground successfully without a DPC and with glazed tiles purely through the porosity of the grouting. Whatever you do, avoid plasterboard in the bathroom. Once wet it has the structural integrity of tissue paper. Lime plaster can deal with floods and be fine once dry. So, strip off the panelling and tile.

3) Don't let that builder anywhere near your house. Be prepared to accept that 99.9% of all tradesmen do not understand older buildings and will make them much worse. Your house has worked fine for a century. If it didn't need rendering during that period it's unlikely to need it now. This is one of those cases where your knowledge has just saved your wallet, sanity and house! 'Sealing' never, ever works. And when it fails, it's like wearing waders with a leak. Replace the bricks (they can sometimes be chiseled out and turned around if you can't find a match), potentially repaint internally (see point 1) with clay paint, then wait and see. If I were you I would have a really good look for other sources of water ingress too - dripping gutter, overflow pipe, rain splashback if near the ground, etc. Damaged bricks could be the problem, but they are pretty common and most times aren't an issue in isolation - there's usually a combo with a repeated water source, rather than just weather.


Final piece of unsolicited advice: the best course of action is often to wait and see. And strategic procrastination is enabled by Kit Kats and Yorkshire Tea.

Thank you for taking the time to reply. I'm off to dig out the damp meter so I can deal with each room appropriately.

With regards to the bathroom, we obviously don't know yet what is under the wood, if we take it off and it's a right mess will it be a case of lime plastering before tiling?

The Kit Kats and tea are on standby, although whilst I'm a Yorkshire lass I have to say Tetley is my cup of choice.

 

[Lacan07]

Where is your bathroom in the house? If its on the upper floor or incorporates mostly internal walls then there's no issue with tiling a bathroom as most people do for practicality. Maybe think about avoiding the external wall but again if on the upper floor its not an issue if all rainwater guttering, etc is sound.

When you say damaged bricks I'm guessing you mean 'spalled' due to freeze thaw? These should be repaired preferably by removing and turning round or the damaged face can be repaired / covered with a coat of lime mortar (best applied with a trowel and brick tape). Lime rendering the whole wall is an option but expensive and quite frankly the gold standard is to leave your house with its original brick facia, unless the wall is prone to driving rain due to location.

Removing old paint from a wall might be tricky without causing too much damage that requires a skim, I'll defer to others on here that may have more experience than me with this. If its not a huge amount of wall then paint stripper perhaps?

 

[paulc]

2) Again, I wouldn't overthink this one. Grouting is porous and many traditional floors deal with damp ground successfully without a DPC and with glazed tiles purely through the porosity of the grouting. Whatever you do, avoid plasterboard in the bathroom. Once wet it has the structural integrity of tissue paper. Lime plaster can deal with floods and be fine once dry. So, strip off the panelling and tile.

3) Don't let that builder anywhere near your house. Be prepared to accept that 99.9% of all tradesmen do not understand older buildings and will make them much worse.

Just add to the two points above - If you are tiling a wall, use a tile backer board. Some come with an insulating core which will help to reduce heat loss and cut down on condensation a little. And when priming the wall, don't use PVA. Go for an acrylic primer designed for the job. Suffice to say, none of this is breathable so ventilation will help to keep moisture at bay.
If you wanted a breathable option, a polished lime plaster would work - Have a look at Tadelakt

If you get a builder recommending K-Rend and telling you it is "breathable", we can suggest a few choice words to use.

 

[Gothichome]

I always recommend the procrastination approach to new owners of century homes. Unless it’s an imperative repair live with home for a year, the home will tell you what it needs. You will be surprised at how fast your priorities will change.

 

[Flyfisher]

3 some of the bricks on the outside are damaged which has lead to a couple of areas becoming a bit damp. A builder has suggested rendering l, which unless he's using a lime product (which he hasn't said he will use) makes no sense to me, he says it will be sealed so it will be fine but I'm thinking if it's sealed it isn't breathing.

In my experience, most builders seek the quickest, easiest and cheapest way to fix a problem because it benefits them and often the house owner too. Unfortunately, it won't necessarily benefit the house itself, or the owner over the long-term.

Damaged bricks might be a bit fiddly to remove and it might be difficult to find well-matching new ones. One solution to the matching problem is to remove the damaged bricks and turn them around if the inner face is undamaged. Again, a little bit fiddly but by no means difficult, even for a DIY-er if they take their time and be careful. There's a retired brickie in our village who now spends his days picking and choosing smallish jobs like this and is more than happy to work with lime. The only problem is that he's in such demand that it can be weeks before he's available, unless it's a real emergency. If you can find someone like this, usually through local recommendation, then you'll have hit the jackpot!

Personally, I would resist rendering over brickwork, even using a breathable lime-based mortar, because it will change the character of the house and it will create a longer term need for maintenance, assuming the render is to be painted, which is usually is, and painting lime render is a whole subject in itself. Yes, limewash is ideal and cheap as chips but, believe me, it's no fun having to apply 2, 3, 4 coats or more every 4/5 years. And that's assuming you can find someone to do it for you! I'd far rather have a few poorly-matched bricks but all in good condition than painted render.

 

[Joanne W]

Where is your bathroom in the house? If its on the upper floor or incorporates mostly internal walls then there's no issue with tiling a bathroom as most people do for practicality. Maybe think about avoiding the external wall but again if on the upper floor its not an issue if all rainwater guttering, etc is sound.

When you say damaged bricks I'm guessing you mean 'spalled' due to freeze thaw? These should be repaired preferably by removing and turning round or the damaged face can be repaired / covered with a coat of lime mortar (best applied with a trowel and brick tape). Lime rendering the whole wall is an option but expensive and quite frankly the gold standard is to leave your house with its original brick facia, unless the wall is prone to driving rain due to location.

Removing old paint from a wall might be tricky without causing too much damage that requires a skim, I'll defer to others on here that may have more experience than me with this. If its not a huge amount of wall then paint stripper perhaps?

Thank you for taking the time to reply. It is an upstairs bathroom and we were only planning on tiling one full wall and the depth of the shower on the outside wall, so that should be OK. Gutters etc have been checked and all sound.

Thanks for your other comments they are most appreciated.

 

[Joanne W]

Just add to the two points above - If you are tiling a wall, use a tile backer board. Some come with an insulating core which will help to reduce heat loss and cut down on condensation a little. And when priming the wall, don't use PVA. Go for an acrylic primer designed for the job. Suffice to say, none of this is breathable so ventilation will help to keep moisture at bay.
If you wanted a breathable option, a polished lime plaster would work - Have a look at Tadelakt

If you get a builder recommending K-Rend and telling you it is "breathable", we can suggest a few choice words to use.

Thank you for taking the time to reply, I'm going away to look at tile backer board and a dictionary for a few choice words .

 

[Joanne W]

I always recommend the procrastination approach to new owners of century homes. Unless it’s an imperative repair live with home for a year, the home will tell you what it needs. You will be surprised at how fast your priorities will change.

Yes that is our approach, not rushing into things and taking our time so it is done right.

 

[Joanne W]

In my experience, most builders seek the quickest, easiest and cheapest way to fix a problem because it benefits them and often the house owner too. Unfortunately, it won't necessarily benefit the house itself, or the owner over the long-term.

Damaged bricks might be a bit fiddly to remove and it might be difficult to find well-matching new ones. One solution to the matching problem is to remove the damaged bricks and turn them around if the inner face is undamaged. Again, a little bit fiddly but by no means difficult, even for a DIY-er if they take their time and be careful. There's a retired brickie in our village who now spends his days picking and choosing smallish jobs like this and is more than happy to work with lime. The only problem is that he's in such demand that it can be weeks before he's available, unless it's a real emergency. If you can find someone like this, usually through local recommendation, then you'll have hit the jackpot!

Personally, I would resist rendering over brickwork, even using a breathable lime-based mortar, because it will change the character of the house and it will create a longer term need for maintenance, assuming the render is to be painted, which is usually is, and painting lime render is a whole subject in itself. Yes, limewash is ideal and cheap as chips but, believe me, it's no fun having to apply 2, 3, 4 coats or more every 4/5 years. And that's assuming you can find someone to do it for you! I'd far rather have a few poorly-matched bricks but all in good condition than painted render.

Thank you for the advice. I'll start the search for a friendly brickie - unless you happen to live in Lincolnshire and fancy passing on your chaps name